The Associated Press
WELLSVILLE, N.Y. — A volunteer firefighter died while trying to rescue a man caught up in a whirlpool near a small waterfall on the Genesee River.
Ronald Thomas, 56, was fishing along with hundreds of others during the Great Wellsville Trout Derby on Sunday afternoon when Kevin Allen, 46, lost his balance near the shore, tumbled over a small waterfall and got his fishing vest caught while battling to swim out of the vortex.
Allen’s 16-year-old son, Dan, jumped in after him, followed by Thomas, his 23-year-old son, Ryan, and another young man, police said.
Allen managed to remove his fishing vest and swim away from the whirlpool, enabling other fishermen to pull him to shore. His son also swam over to a rock and was rescued. But the others took longer to escape from the swirling currents, and Thomas was pulled under when his waders filled up with water, police said.
“We could’ve had five people killed,” state police Investigator Jack Migliore said in Monday’s Wellsville Daily Reporter. “He tried to do what he could do. Unfortunately, there was a chain reaction and while everyone did their damnedest to save him, there was nothing they could do.
“Eventually, the whirlpool spit Ron out, who was the third in, and he floated down the river.”
Colleagues pulled him out but could not resuscitate him.
Witnesses said they believed Thomas may have hit his head on a rock and was under the water for as long as eight minutes.
An autopsy will determine if Thomas drowned or possibly suffered a heart attack, Migliore said. The other four people were treated for hypothermia at a hospital in this southwestern New York town and later discharged.